While we are all getting ready for Christmas ( except Yogi, of course
)
I just wanted to post a bit about the conditions of our soldiers during this time.
Just a few thoughts while we are all snuggly, warm and dry wherever we are.
From various sources...
At the turn of the century the War Office had acquired an area of some ninety square miles on Salisbury Plain as a military training ground. Extensive artillery and rifle ranges were constructed, and permanent accommodation was provided in barracks begun during the South African War. The tented camps to which the Canadians now came were on sites where the Territorial Forces had done their summer training for many years.
Like the rest of Salisbury Plain the War Office's acquisition spread over a broad, undulating plateau, the expanse of upland pasture broken only by occasional belts of trees planted as sheep shelters in days gone by. In the deep valley of the River Avon, which crossed from north to south, several hamlets of ivy-covered cottages clustering around a small stone church and the inevitable wayside tavern formed little civilian islands in the military area.
In the hot dry weather which prevailed in the early autumn of 1914 the countryside was at its best. An officer in the small Canadian advance party reported from Salisbury at the beginning of October: "I must say that the camp sites are beautifully situated and the turf is excellent, and will be quite an agreeable change from the sand plains which our boys have been accustomed to.”
Divisional Headquarters were established at "Ye Olde Bustard", an isolated inn three miles north-west of Stonehenge. The bulk of the Contingent was distributed in four camps extending for five miles near the west side of the military area. Bustard Camp, beside General Alderson's headquarters, was given over to the 1st Infantry Brigade, the Divisional Mounted Troops and Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry; two miles to the north-west the 2nd and 3rd Brigades were in West Down South Camp; a mile beyond in West Down North were all the artillery and the Divisional Supply Column; while two miles farther north the 4th Brigade, the cavalry, the 17th Battalion and the Newfoundland Contingent occupied Pond Farm Camp.
Before the last Canadian unit to disembark reached Salisbury Plain the weather had broken. A quarter of an inch of rain fell on 21 October, and a full inch in the next five days. It was the beginning of a period of abnormally heavy precipitation which brought rain on 89 out of 123 days; the fall of 23.9 inches between mid-October and mid-February almost doubled the 32-year average. There was no escape from the ever pervading dampness, and conditions steadily deteriorated. Temperatures were unusually low, on some nights dropping below the freezing point. High winds pierced the light fabric of the unheated tents, and twice in three weeks gales flattened much of the Division's canvas. Mud was everywhere. An impervious layer of chalk a few inches below ground-level held the rain water at the surface, and wherever wheels rolled or men marched the "excellent" turf quickly became aquagmire. All attempts at drainage were fruitless; scraping the mud from the roads only exposed the treacherously slippery chalk. There were no permanent barracks available for the Canadians, and a programme of building huts begun in October 1914 was overtaken by the arrival of winter.
Indeed the miserable weather turned training into a drudgery. There were no means of drying clothing, and men who ploughed through ankle-deep mud all day had to let their rain-soaked uniforms dry on their backs. Describing conditions of camp life as "simply appalling", with the whole camp grounds from Salisbury to Pond Farm "just one sea of mud", Colonel Carson reported to the Minister on 7 December that he had learned from a large number of medical officers that "the general consensus of opinion is that another two or three months of present conditions in England will have a serious effect on the general health and well-being of our troops". He felt that "they would have been a thousand times better off in Canada than they are at Salisbury Plains". The plight of the Canadians had been studied with no little concern by the Australian authorities, and as a result of the conditions on Salisbury Plain the combined Australian and New Zealand contingents, 29,000 strong, on their way to train in English camps, had been halted at Suez and diverted to training grounds in Egypt.
Carson's proposal to Lord Kitchener that the Canadian Contingent should also move to Egypt to train was turned down.
Which is why the ANZAC went to Gallipoli, and we (except for the Newfs) missed that disaster.
It will be some summers before the grass grows green again on parts of Salisbury Plain, where the overseas troops are in camp. There are a trifle over 30,000 men in the Canadian Division (which is a good deal more than a division) quartered in four camps-Bustard, North and South Westdown, and Pond Farm-and it is not easy to say which of the four at the moment is the muddiest. The men who are in bustard think that they have a little the worst of it; and men in the others invite them to "come and see."
In spite of the mud, however, they are all extraordinarily fit. The chief trouble among them is that more than the orthodox number of men have coughs as a result of the mud and the raw, damp weather; but they do their coughing very cheerfully. They call it the "Bustard whisper" in one camp and the "Pond Farm particular" in another. In the recent cold spell they were particularly fit; it bore some resemblance to Canadian kind. Now that the frost has gone and the ground has again become plashed into belts of slime and ooze, they object to it, lightheartedly, but in language which is as vigorous as it is generally picturesque. Of serious illness there is very little; the men have too much hard work and fresh air for that.
Every day when the weather is not impossible they are worked really hard; and after five hours of stiff marching or manoeuvring (say from 9 a.m. till 2) they come swinging in as fresh as the proverbial paint and put in an hour or so of football before it gets dusk. Besides the hard work and the football and fresh air, they are behaving in a way that keeps them fit.
Cases of drunkenness are few, for the men are fairly removed from the temptations of a large town. The nearest camp is 13 miles from Salisbury by a road which is largely a river of mud. The traffic which it is subjected to would test the best of high roads, and if you go to the camp by motor-car you had better allow an extra half-hour for delays on the road in case a heavy motor lorry has slipped into a ditch.
The Canadian Field Force now on Salisbury Plain numbers something over 30,000 men.
Naturally the whole force is not camped together, but is scattered over four main camps and several smaller ones-Bastard, Westdown North and Westdown South, Bulford, Pond Farm, Larkhill, Sling Plantation-the most widely separated of which are not less than seven or eight miles apart; and the miles are over roads of almost inconceivable muddiness, for which the men console themselves with the reflection that it is, at least, good preparation for life in wet trenches. And it is astonishing in how much mud it is possible to play football and even lacrosse, when you really have a mind to it. Here and there, too, one can find green oases in the wilderness of mud where there is still sound turf enough to give foothold for a sparring ring. So one way and another the Canadians keep incorrigibly cheerful.
A question which the weather and the mud have brought to the fore is that of the relative merits of canvas tents and of huts. One infantry brigade has already moved into huts at Bulford. The men are much more comfortable, and they can now get dry clothes with reasonable regularity. But the sick list is larger. When the Brigade was under canvas there were hardly any coughs or colds. Now there are more than enough. The huts, which accommodate about 40 men each, are raised off the ground on brick stilts, and as the floors are none too closely boarded, the wind gets underneath, and whistles fearsomely up through the cracks in a way which the medical authorities are inclined to think has not a little to do with the growth of the sick list. New huts are in places being built boarded to the ground and the present intention is to build huts for the whole Force.
Building huts for 30,000 men is a fairly serious undertaking. Even a brigade makes a town of 5,000 inhabitants; and it is not only the building of the huts that has to be done but all the piping for water supply, except in places where the ground has already been regularly used for camp purposes, must be put in. At Larkhill, not far from Bulford, where the largest operations are going on, it looks as if a whole Garden City, larger than ordinary, was being built at once.
It is not only the men who suffer from the mud. Standing all day and night picketed in mud almost to the fetlocks is not good for horses' hooves; and where the horses are-especially horses and guns-the mud is inevitably the worst. It is astonishing how much ground batteries can churn up; and, after an impartial acquaintance with most of the country, I am inclined to think that the worst of the mud is to be found about Westdown North, where the artillery is quartered. The best footgear for getting about the lines is rubber boots to the knees. And drilling, marching, and manoeuvring are not altogether joy under the existing conditions, and in route-marching it is not easy to make more than three miles an hour with the guns, a ten-mile march-or 3½ hours-being as much as the horses want.
Of greater significance to the mounted units than their own move into billets was the fact that at the same time their horses were put under cover and on dry standings. During November and December the condition of the animals had deteriorated seriously through their being forced to stand outside in mud to their hocks, their rain-soaked blankets providing little protection from the elements. Grooming was impossible, nor could sodden leather be kept clean. The change of accommodation worked wonders, and before January ended horses, harness and saddlery were reported restored to their proper condition. The general health of the troops was remarkably good, and only after the move into crowded huts were there serious outbreaks of respiratory and intestinal ailments. There were 39 cases of meningitis, 28 proving fatal. Of the four thousand admissions to hospital in the fourteen weeks on Salisbury Plain, 1249 were cases of venereal disease.
But the worse the weather conditions are the better the training for what may lie ahead. That is the fact with which every man consoles himself. Nobody knows whether the Canadians are going to be wanted "over there" before the spring; but everybody knows that wherever they go, the Real Thing is likely to be a good deal harder than anything on Salisbury Plain. And the one thing to do meanwhile is to get hard and fit enough to stand whatever comes for one's own sake, for Canada's, and the Empire's.
It seems by now the PPCLI has left, joining the 80th brigade of the 27th British Division;
and the Newfoundland Regiment has left for the 88th Brigade, 29th Division.
The 29th will be the first to land at Gallipoli, and among the last to leave.
CKA Uber 
CKA Uber 
![[B-o]](./images/smilies/drinkup.gif "Drink up")
